Mondays are my holiday

We buy our New York Times from Sunny’s Service Station in Kresgeville.  They have an special arrangement with the distributor just for us, and we are the only customers for the Times.  According to the agreement they worked out the Times is delivered six days a week, all but Monday. 

While I also have an on-line subscription, I don’t look at it.  Monday is my day off.  Nothing about the latest Trump administration stupidity.  No idiotic comments.  No nutty bullshit from his appointees.  No bad news to irritate or horrify.

I love Mondays.

Deportees in Costa Rica

In February 200 migrants from various countries, including Russia, Afghanistan, China, and Iran, were deported from the U.S. to Costa Rica.  They were initially put in a detention center and were not allowed to leave.  

After both internal and outside pressure, Costa Rica last week published its new policy.  The deportees are granted a three-month humanitarian permit to leave the detention center, although they are also allowed to stay there if they need a place to sleep, eat, and shower.

They are not allowed to work in Costa Rica at the present time, although they may apply for asylum.  If they are granted asylum, they can then legally be employed.  

Omar Badilla, the head of Costa Rica’s migration authority, said, “We want this population to be integrated into our country.  I know that they can offer us a lot.”

About 20 years ago I spent ten days in Costa Rica and really liked the country.  Now I like it even more.

Info for this post came in part from Emiliano Rodriguez Mega, “Costa Rica Tells Deportees They Can Stay or Move On,” New York Times, (Apr. 24, 2025), p. A5.

Annexing Crimea

Trump has called upon Zelensky to recognize Russia’s annexation of Ukraine, even though Crimea has been an integral part of Ukraine and recognizing Russia’s annexation would be a reward for Russian aggression.

Do you know who has refused to recognize Moscow’s annexation of Crimea?

China. 

Not kidding.  China.

Due Process

The Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights states that no person can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law....”

The 14th Amendment says that states cannot deprive “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law....”

Due process of law comes in two parts.  Say you are arrested for murder.  You must be told your rights when you are arrested.  You have a right to an attorney.  You can ask for a jury trial.  You can appeal.  Those kinds of rights are called procedural due process.

Now suppose you are arrested for running a red light.  You are told your rights.  You have a hearing.  You plead guilty.  You are then sentenced to 50 years to life in prison.  You received procedural due process, but the sentence would have been a denial of your substantive due process.

If you are picked up by ICE agents and sent to prison in El Salvador, you have been denied both procedural and substantive due process, both guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment.  That is what the Trump administration is doing.  It is violating our constitutional rights.  We have a constitutional crisis.  Right now.

Remembering General Bonespurs

 It’s been 50 years ago since the Vietnam War ended.  The Vietnamese are celebrating.  The wounds are healing.  The U.S. has an embassy in Vietnam, we trade with Vietnam, we had been financing a program to help Vietnamese find unexploded land mines and deal with issues related to Agent Orange.  Many American soldiers have returned to help with the reconciliation efforts. 

Until the Trump administration.  The Ambassador to Vietnam, Mr. Marc Knapper, son of a Vietnam Vet, had planned to attend the ceremony on April 29.  Delegates from other U.S. Allies, including Australia, are attending as well.  

The Trump Administration ordered the Ambassador to skip the celebration.  No one is sure why, since the relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam had been strong, and both countries have an interest in Vietnam keeping some distance from China.

Speculation is that Trump does not want to call attention to the war.  Remember he didn’t go.  Remember, he paid a doctor to say that he had bone spurs.  He did not want to go because he opposed the war for moral or political reasons.  He did not want to go because he was a chicken shit and because it would have interfered with his plans to stay in the states and make money.  

He has always been a grifter, always been dishonest, always been a little coward.  Nothing has changed, but he hates when people are reminded of it.

So I’m reminding you.

Some material in this post are from Damien Cave, “U.S. Tells Vietnam Envoys to Skip Events Marking 50 Years Since War’s End,” New York Times, (Apr. 23, 2025), p. A9.  Calling Trump chicken shit and speculating on his motives is all mine, but I certainly don’t mind if you spread the word.

Manufacturing buttons

I have a button manufacturing machine.  You cut out a circular message, put it in one side of the machine on top of a round piece of metal and then cap it with a piece of round transparent plastic.  You then press down on a handle and make the message part.  Then you press on the back of the button, which includes the pin.  The difficult part is cutting out the message.  You need to get the circular cut just right.

I’ve gotten pretty good at the manufacturing process, although the buttons are made one at a time. 

My buttons include the following messages:

Don’t blame me:  I voted for her

Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitism

Elect a clown, expect a circus

Where can we stick the plastic straws?

Rubio Hegseth Kennedy Noem Bondi Patel Gabbard.  Too many clowns for the clown car.  (That one isn’t very good–I had to make the font too small.)

Let’s Go Fat Brandon

Foxtrot Delta Tango (Think of the letters and figure it out.)

Who voted for Elon Musk? 

and the one that seems to be the most popular

Deport Elon Musk.

Let's have children and watch them die

Ok, that was harsh, but how do you interpret this?  On the front page of today’s New York Times was this headline:  “Would $5000 Bonuses Spur New Baby Boom?”  Trump aides are thinking of implementing a program to award $5000 to every mother who gives birth.  They think we don’t have enough people in the U.S., which brings up the question of why we are deporting the ones we have.

Be that as it may, next to that article was one entitled “E.P.A. Poised to Cancel Grants To Study Dangers to Children.”  Pro-lifers are often accused of caring only for “unborn children” until they are born.  This is why people think that.  Why is the point of awarding a bonus to giving birth if we don’t care what happens to the kid after it is born?

I’m not sure what to call this.  Ironic?  Bizarre?  Nuts?  All of the above?  

Redefining "harm" in the Endangered Species Act

What is the biggest reason that many species face extinction?  You can sum it up in one phrase:  Loss of Habitat.  The way to protect a species in decline is to protect its habitat.

The Trump administration now plans to redefine “harm” to mean the deliberate killing of members of that species.  You must only protect a species from being trapped or shot.  If you cut down a forest necessary for the survival of a species and the species is then goes extinct, that doesn’t count.  You didn’t actually set out to kill the animal or plant or insect.  It just happened to be a byproduct.  

This change, of course, will mean an increased number of extinctions.  It will also gut one of the most effective laws ever passed.  It is just one more example of how little this administration cares about the natural world.  

In the daily uproar of bad news and stupid decisions, this change is almost unnoticed, but it will definitely be noticed in the years ahead.  Mining, lumber, and petroleum interests and developers are, of course, delighted.

Abu Ghraib today

Remember how shocked Americans were when the photos of Iranian prisoners in Abu Ghraib were released.  Remember how the male prisoners were forced to disrobe in front of American soldiers and ;pile on top of each other.  Remember how those photos led to changes in the treatment.  

In an article today in the New York Times magazine by Peter C. Baker, Mr. Baker points out that the Trump administration would have released those photos, bragged about the treatment, and laughed about what the administration was doing.

If you don’t believe that, look at the way Kristie Noem posed in front of the prisoners in El Salvador.  We have become a vile and disgusting country. 

J. D. Vance and the Pope–an Easter story

On Good Friday the Pope wouldn’t see J.D. Vance.  Vance, somewhat abashed, said he was a “baby Catholic” and didn’t know all the doctrine.

Good grief.  Just look at the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount.  It’s right there in Mathew, the first Gospel.  It’s a good summation.  

Why is it that I, an atheist, am a better Catholic than that cowardly little weasel J.D. Vance?

"Time for a Civic Uprising"

That’s the title of a David Brooks column in today’s New York Times.  Brooks mentions Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, professors who looked at hundreds of nonviolent uprisings.  They found that no single thing works, but many things in combination can succeed.

Brooks mentions lawsuits, mass rallies, strikes, work slowdowns, boycotts.  I’m sure you can think of more.  Refuse to cooperate.  Disobey.  Speak up.  Speak out.  

dear readers:  I have never done this, but if you haven't read last night's post, please do so.  It is one of the longest posts I've ever done, but I think it is important.  We are already living in the dual state I wrote about.

The Dual State

Why don’t the MAGA people take down their Trump signs?  Why do they still support Trump when he is deporting innocent people, attacking colleges, and illegally firing government workers?  

Have you personally been harmed by any of the Trump policies?  I seriously doubt if anyone who reads this post has been laid off, is in danger of being deported, or has been harassed by the police.  Perhaps your 401k has lost some money, but if you are like me, nothing in your day-to-day life has changed since Trump took office.

Certainly you are bothered by the cruelty, the lies, the whole tariff business, the clampdown on colleges, the cravenness of large law firms, and the incompetents running government agencies, but that is because you are a good citizen, you care about America and its place in the world, and you can’t sleep at night.

Now think about the average MAGA voter.  Where does he get his info?  What does he know about tariffs?  Can he find Greenland on a map?  Does he know about the Associated Press being kept out of briefings?  Does he know what the Associated Press is?

The latest issue of The Atlantic has an article entitled “A Warning Out of Time.”  It discusses a book by Ernst Fraenkel, a German-Jewish attorney who got out in 1938 and two years later published The Dual State.  Fraenkel noted that the Nazis did not end the day-to-day legal system.  The country still had traffic laws, normal criminal procedures, normal police enforcement.  

At the same time the government established a separate system of state lawlessness and arbitrary rules, BUT ONLY FOR CERTAIN PEOPLE.  If you were not in a targeted group, you may not have noticed anything different in your life.  

If you are a billionaire who sat in the front rows of Trump’s inaugural, your business is protected.  If you are a farmer in Iowa, you might worry about the tariffs, but you are protected.  If you think immigrants are overrunning the country, you may even be pleased that they are being shipped off to a prison in El Salvador without due process.  What is due process anyway?

This is why Trump supporters are still flying their flags and keeping their signs up.  They like Columbia University getting punished.  They like well-paid government employees getting fired.  They hear on their news sources that Robert Kennedy, Jr., is recommending inexpensive medicines, and they are delighted.  

Fraenkel’s duel state is what is happening in Russia or Hungary today.  You don’t need genocide to have a duel state.  Just a pliant population that gets the news the leaders feed them on Fox or “X” or Truth Social and isn’t too concerned about the targeted groups who are living in a violent state unchecked by legalities and where ordinary law no longer applies.

You need a significant population who looks about and says “not my problem.”  We have that population in America.  This is what I find so disturbing and so unexpected. 

Another small nail in the lid of the coffin of Western Civilization

I was early for a cardiologist appointment yesterday, so I ducked into a RiteAid to buy a paperback book.  I went to the rack where the books were kept, and it was gone.  Not one or two books, not a few magazines-–nothing.  An empty space.

When I asked the clerk where the books were, she told me they no longer stock books.  “No one reads anymore.”

Cuttiong NOAA's budget

The Office of Management and Budget is cutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research budget.  The funds would be sliced from last year’s $485 million to $l70 million.  

This would affect programs such as the early warning systems for natural disasters, scientific education for students, and the study of the Arctic temperatures.  We would lose research abilities in ocean and weather data.  We would lose research into climate science.  

Grants that would fund species recovery and habitat conservation would be eliminated.  The Space Weather Prediction Center would be shifted to the Department of Homeland Security.  

The proposal is part of the effort, to quote the report, of “eliminating the federal government’s support of woke ideology.”  It is also likely to be an attempt to privatize the Weather Service.

Every time I think it can’t get worse, it gets worse.

Info for this post is from Austyn Gaffney, “Plan Calls for End to NOAA’s Research,” New York Times, (Apr. 13, 2025), p. 25.

Hooray for Harvard

The oldest and richest American university just told our would-be dictator to go pound sand.  Harvard refused to bow to Trump’s unconstitutional and illegal demands.  Trump immediately cancelled $2 billion in grants.  How he can do that single-handedly in a supposedly democratic country is hard to fathom, although Congress seems unable and unwilling to protest.

I’m sending Harvard $50.  It is a pittance, but at least it expresses my support in a concrete way.  I am so happy.  Maybe now other institutions will find the courage to stand up to this creep.

Early income tax filing this year

I finished my income tax return tonight, two whole two days before it is due.  I am so pleased with myself.  I also had enough money to pay what I owe, unlike the year when we had to sell the car in order to pay our bill to the I.R.S. 

I did put a note on the back of the envelope with my return that says “Please do not allow Elon Musk or his tech bros to get their grubby little hands on this.”  

Today the New York Times had a scary article about all the data banks Musk wants access to, and there are a lot of them.  Why he wants that data was not spelled out.  Income tax returns were on the list.

Rats jumping ON the ship

According to an article in the business section of the New York Times today, a number of large companies, including Amazon and Apple, are now advertising on X in an effort to suck up to Elon Musk.  No shame, no morals, no support for American democracy or the American people–just naked self-interest and a desire for even more money.  

I want to thank my daughter for the title.  It is a good summary of much of what is happening today with law firms, universities, and quite a few members of Congress.

"Beautiful, clean coal"

Yesterday Trump signed an order to revive the coal industry.  He called talked about "beautiful, clean coal."  I just had to set him straight.  Tomorrow I'm sending out this letter.  I hope it does some good.

Dear President Trump:

I read that you referred to coal as “beautiful, clean coal.”  Perhaps you are not as familiar with coal as I am.  I live in Carbon County, Pennsylvania.  Anthracite coal was discovered here in Summit Hill.  While I will agree that anthracite, unlike the crumbly bituminous coal found more in western Pennsylvania, can be quite beautiful and shiny, it is definitely not clean.  

I have seen miners come home from deep mines near Nesquehoning, and believe me, they were dirty.  In addition, when I was a kid we burned coal in our furnace.  It is not clean.  It leaves ashes and it pollutes the air.  I don’t know why you think it is clean, but I think upon further investigation, you will find it is anything but.

Incidentally, I now have solar panels on my shed room.  They are clean. 

Sincerely,

Roy Christman

Trump caves

The stock market dropped too much for his billionaire friends.  He couldn’t take the heat.  Do you hear that bwaak bwaak buk buk bwaak.  That is the sound of Trump chickening out on his tariffs.  He buckled.  He wimped out.  He tried to put a good face on it, but he raised the white flag.  He surrendered.  He was a scaredy cat.  He caved.

I wish I knew more MAGA people so I could rub it in.  

This time the damage is too great

After Trump’s first term Biden was able to repair most of the damage.  Relations with allies were patched up, EPA regs were reinstated, hurtful policies rescinded in most cases.  Some of Trump’s appointees did their best to rein Trump in, and that helped.

This time the damage will be permanent.  Allies will not trust us.  Laws have been flouted without consequence.  Contraceptives have been cut off from nearly 50 million women in poor countries, causing a rise in maternal deaths.  Global warming will speed up.  US Aid with those food crates that say “a gift from the American people” will no longer be delivered.  The Voice of America has gone silent.  Dictators have already been emboldened.  No one will look upon the U.S. as the protector of democracy.  We are just another authoritarian state, right up there with Turkey, Hungary, and Venezuela.